Amorette's Offenses

The Specialty of Leadership

The Specialty of Leadership

People were running, crying out in fear or calling for everyone on the street to get inside, to hide until the attack blew over. Somehow, they all seemed to know that something was different this time compared to all the last.

There hadn't been this many ships before, and they had never attacked en mass like this. If they got past the protective outer ring, there would be nothing stopping them from raining down fire upon their heads and, even if they were successfully shot from the sky, that only meant that they would be crashing right into the fields or even the city itself.

It was, strangely enough, a scene that Amorette wasn't altogether unfamiliar with. While she couldn't say that it was exactly identical, it did remind her of the way her father and the others had all gone running for cover when the Gascony soldiers began climbing down from the Bronze Docks, invading their homes and taking over their space.

At the time, Amorette had been the one who had beaten them back. Alone but determined, protecting her people from an invader that she didn't understand and hadn't been able to predict.

Now, she ran alongside Cupid, both of them fighting against the general surge of the crowd rushing to get indoors. She didn't have to ask to know where he was going. Despite being a non-combatant, he always seemed eager to run right into danger.

And despite knowing she could be in just as much danger, she followed right along behind him. The ships were coming to attack and she could only think of the nice people that she and Cupid had been treating and healing these last few days. If they died because the attacks landed, then what was even the purpose of coming to help them?

She also liked a majority of them. She didn't want them to die.

By the time the pair reached the gates leading out into the fields, the farmers and workers had all run back inside and the two guards were trying to close the doors. In the event that the soldiers penetrated the outer wall, they needed to protect the city.

Cupid called out for them to halt, surprising them both long enough for himself and Amorette to slip through and out the other side. Neither soldier attempted to stop them. They just gave them disbelieving looks, as though they were addled in the head, as they finished shutting the gates, the heavy thud of the iron and wooden bar falling across it loudly from the other side echoing at their backs. Amorette turned and stared at the imposing site for only a moment before chasing after Cupid.

The ships had begun closing the last of the distance and the ballistae on the outer wall were firing on them, trying to keep them at bay. However, taking down even a single ship wasn't easy and the concentrated fire needed to do so was lacking as everyone on the wall was trying to keep back all nine of the approaching ships at once.

Maybe a ship or two would fall, but in that time the others would have been successful. Amorette could see their coming defeat and it scared her. The fear was surprising, gripping her belly in its powerful talons.

The outer wall gates were not only closed and barred, but sealed with a dark, sticky, fireproof tar in an effort to keep their enemies from lighting them ablaze. No one worried about needing to get them open again at a future date. The short stairs coming off of the wall, leading up to the top, were familiar to Amorette now that she had been here with Cupid multiple times on their trips to make sure the soldiers didn't need them.

There had always been a harsh awareness to the men and women stationed here. They were the only thing keeping the entire city of Jorives safe and the weight of that knowledge was one they didn't bear lightly.

Today, there was a frantic sort of edge to their focus. They called out to each other, running up and down the wall to tend to the ballistae, bringing more bolts, reinforcing any weak spots. As Cupid and Amorette crested the top, one man ran by with a bucket filled with a flammable liquid to coat the tips of the bolts in the hope that, if they hit the engines of the airships, it would be enough to spark and catch a fire and bring them down.